Free Soviet Press Depends on Attitude, Not Law

Published: October 28, 1989

To the Editor:

''A Proposed Soviet Law Limits Press Censorship'' (news story, Sept. 27) describes a proposal to eliminate preliminary censorship by the Soviet Government. Institutions, organizations or individuals would be at liberty to publish on their own responsibility. Governmental authorities would, in turn, have the right to review a publication after its appearance and to disapprove of it if they find that it violates specific norms of public order or interest.

This procedure would replace the present rules, traditional under the Soviet system, under which official censors have the right to inspect and make judgments on material before publication. No less important, the draft law would also grant individuals and nongovernmental groups the right to publish.

An effort to liberalize censorship while also reserving for it a legitimate role poses complicated questions. It is a good deal more challenging than such alternatives as leaving the issue undefined or to dispose of it by a brief rhetorical assertion of freedom of the press (as was done in both the 1936 and 1977 Soviet Constitutions). These issues faced the Russian Government for generations before the Russian Revolution, and a look at the record is instructive.

Before the 19th century, the Russian Government did not try to systematize an approach to censorship, relying instead on tradition and on administrative prerogatives. In 1804, a censorship law was introduced, modeled on Danish law, which required preliminary examination of manuscripts by officials of the ministry of education. Foreign books destined for individuals (a significant intellectual and political factor at the time), were exempted from censorship. A few years later, the newly established police ministry was also given a role in the process.

The system was made a good deal tighter during the absolutist reign of Czar Nicholas I (1825-55). In addition to conservative ideology and fear of contagion from the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848, the growth of official bureaucracy played a role. Virtually all organs of the government insisted on being involved in censorship in their areas of concern. The result was an era of pervasive and, at times, remarkably petty censorship, at the end of which Nikolai Gogol's name was not allowed to appear in print.

A more reform-minded atmosphere under Alexander II produced a law (1865) that provided for significant abolition of preliminary censorship. Long books, for example, were exempted; so were periodicals published in St. Petersburg and Moscow. The law provided for judicial as well as administrative enforcement. While giving more leeway to the press in the intellectual centers, the law also left authorities with the option to seize publications if their contents were deemed to warrant it.

Conditions got tougher following Alexander's assassination in 1881. While preliminary censorship was not reinstituted per se, an 1882 law prescribed that it would be invoked for papers and journals that had had three warnings. Materials would need to be submitted to the censors in draft by 11 P.M. on the eve of publication, difficult for the daily press. The censors, moreover, were given the authority not only to suspend an individual publication, but in effect also to prevent its editors or publishers from working with other publications. These prerogatives were widely used into the early 20th century.

Late in the revolutionary year of 1905, an embattled regime proclaimed a constitutional monarchy, which promised, among other things, freedom of the press. The legislation that followed gave this freedom a nuanced interpretation. Preliminary censorship was abolished for all publications. Authorities, however, were left with the power to seize publications judged in violation of norms, subject to subsequent court review -an option that was particulary troublesome for the daily press.

Printing facilities were available at that time on a commercial basis, and as important as the letter of the law was the widespread commitment among political and intellectual groups to make maximum use of the press, and to test the realm of the possible. As a result, in a period that saw great artistic and intellectual variety, hundreds of periodicals representing all parts of the political spectrum were legally published in the years before 1914 - including Bolshevik, Menshevik, Social Democratic, Liberal, Conservative and Reactionary views.

It was the period of the nation's greatest freedom of the press, unmatched before or since. It showed, as earlier periods also did, that when the role of government in the news media is a strong one, the specifics of censorship law are only part of the story. The commitment of opinion makers to communicate with the public, and forbearance on the part of the authorities, are at least as important. VLADIMIR LEHOVICH Washington, Oct. 2, 1989 The writer is an adjunct professor at the School of International Service of American University.